


We agreed never to speak of the Gold Rush. (Or, that one time in Telluride.)

by doomed_spectacles



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Bandits & Outlaws, Banter, Birthday Party, Cats, Crowley and horses, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Gift Exchange, Historical Omens, Horses, Humor, Labor Unions, M/M, The Gold Rush, The Wild West, miners
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:07:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25510303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomed_spectacles/pseuds/doomed_spectacles
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley regale a birthday gathering with a tale of outlaws, demons, angels, and horses in the Wild West.Or,Crowley comes up with a rather unique solution to his problems with horses.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 43
Collections: Can't no preacher man save my soul, Genuary 2021, Holly Jolly July: a Good Omens Gift Exchange





	We agreed never to speak of the Gold Rush. (Or, that one time in Telluride.)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [James_Usari](https://archiveofourown.org/users/James_Usari/gifts).



> This fic is a gift to James_Usari for the Holly Jolly July Exchange! They asked for (I’m paraphrasing) world-building the crap out of one tiny thing the author has interest in and/or Aziraphale/Crowley being complete doofuses. I sincerely hope this fits the bill!
> 
> Aziraphale is describing their antics in a slightly fictionalized Telluride during the Gold Rush era. (Telluride is a high mountain town tucked into a box canyon in the mountains of Colorado. It’s now a ski town and just might be the most beautiful place in the world.) Way more info than necessary in the end notes.
> 
> Huge thanks to [@chamyl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chamyl/pseuds/chamyl) for the beta!

Adam plopped down on the grass. Dog ran in a frenzied circle around the group, then settled next to him. Adam scratched his ears, which made him flop onto his back and kick his legs in the air. “I asked for a pony but dad said no, probably cuz it would poop in the yard.”

“Actually, pony poop would be good for the yard,” said Wensleydale. He had vanilla icing lining his mouth and staining his lips white.

“I don’t think it would be good for the yard unless it was fed properly. With grass and stuff. Diets full of grains and processed foods are bad for horses. And people.” Pepper took a sip of lemonade that had been made from powder in a tin and then licked her popsicle. It was a bright blue color rarely found naturally in food.

“Grass and stuff? Is that what ponies eat?” Brian asked. He was covered, head to toe, in nearly every food item that had appeared on the folding table set up in the Young’s backyard. The patio had helpfully expanded to accommodate four growing children, two adults, two supernatural entities, and one former hellhound. The amount of balloons in the space was technically not possible, but Crowley had tweaked the law of physics. Just a tiny bit. He liked balloons, after all, and what was a birthday party without balloons?

“It doesn’t matter because I didn’t get one,” Adam said. “Couldn’t one of _you two_ make a pony show up? Or a whole horse!”

“Now Adam,” Anathema said, “Just because you’re acquainted with, umm, individuals with special abilities, doesn’t mean you can use these abilities for your own purposes. Even if it is your birthday. No interfering, remember?”

“Didn’t you cast a spell the other day to help butterflies find your new butterfly garden?” Newt asked. His voice was gently admonishing, which was really the only kind of admonishing Newt’s voice was capable of. Especially where Anathema was concerned. He sat cross-legged on the grass next to her, and also had vanilla icing on his lips.

“That’s different, honey, I was- and besides the butterflies-”

“I’m sorry dears, but Anathema is right,” Aziraphale said, with a sympathetic smile. “We can’t make ponies appear out of thin air in the back garden, no matter what type of excrement they may, or may not, well, excrete.”

“I mean, we _could,_ ” Crowley muttered.

“No, no we _couldn’t_. I assure you, we couldn’t.”

“He said you could!” Brian’s voice was muffled, seeing as he’d shoved a piece of cake in his mouth a moment earlier.

“Actually, he did say you could.”

Aziraphale surveyed the children from his place in a lawn chair with the sort of exasperated face usually reserved for Austen enthusiasts who insisted on trying to buy things from him. “Well, the thing is, you see, Crowley is not allowed to go near anything with hooves. It’s simply too dangerous.”

He paused.

“For Crowley.”

“Angel-”

“I must insist, Crowley, we agreed,” Aziraphale replied, not looking Crowley in the eye and whispering loudly as if the rest of the group couldn’t hear him. They swiveled their heads from angel to demon to angel as the conversation vollied.

“Angel, that was centuries ago. And besides-”

“Besides nothing! After what happened in Telluride I will not allow you near a horse again. It’s out of the question.”

Pepper raised her hand like she was in school. “What happened in Telluride?”

“And where’s Telluride?” Adam asked.

“No, no! Angel you cannot tell that story-”

Anathema leaned back on her elbows and stretched out on the blanket she’d spread underneath her skirt. “Oh, well now you have to tell it.” She smiled sweetly at Crowley, who made a face at her.

“If you insist,” Aziraphale said, clearly pleased. He’d tried, unsuccessfully, to lobby Wensleydale and Brian to revolt against the no-magic-act decree that had been very politely, but very firmly, communicated on the invitation. This was as close as he was going to get to The Amazing Mr. Fell’s magic act, so he seized the opportunity.

Aziraphale leaned forward and folded his hands on his lap. He put on a conspiratorial face, as if he were sharing the secret of the Ark of the Covenant with a group of children.

He began.

“It was during the Gold Rush,” Aziraphale said, emphasizing the ‘O’ in gold and drawing out the words for his captive audience. “In the state of _Colorado_.” He said each syllable slowly and deliberately, as if he were attempting to speak a language he didn’t know well to a person who was hard of hearing. _Cah-low-rah-doe._ Four children, two adults, one demon, and one dog stared at him blankly. 

He cleared his throat.

“Silver, angel,” Crowley said. He was sprawled on his own lawn chair in a tangle of limbs and plastic. “They mostly mined silver in Telluride, not gold.”

“Yes, but gold is more dramatic. It wasn’t called the _Silver Rush_ , after all.”

“Isn’t Telluride a chemical element of gold?” Anathema asked.

“Book girl!” Crowley exclaimed, pointing in her direction. “Bringing metallurgy to the party, well done.”

Anathema looked smug.

“May I please continue?” Aziraphale cleared his throat again, this time in a tone that brooked no argument. Adam looked around at the Them, then nodded to Aziraphale.

“The year was 1903-”

“It wasn’t,” Crowley interrupted. “The silver market crashed in 1894, angel, so it was definitely not 1903.”

Aziraphale ignored him.

“The year was 1903 and I’d been assigned to travel to a remote town in America called Telluride,” he said, folding his hands in his lap and looking pleased as punch. “It was named this after the elemental compound you mentioned, Anathema.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Crowley said. He’d reclined in his lawn chair so far back that the legs were only holding due to a very small demonic miracle he was relieved he wouldn’t have to report to anyone.

“It was.” Aziraphale turned to Crowley, exasperated and fond, but unused to not getting his way. “If you have another version of the story, you can tell it after.”

“My version,” Crowley said, addressing the kids and young adults assembled on the grass, “will be the cool version.” He tipped his sunglasses down so the kids could see his snake eyes and curled his mouth into a devilish smile.

“We’ll be the judge of that,” said Pepper, who was clearly not impressed.

Crowley blanched, but tried not to show it.

“Actually, she’s right,” Wensleydale chimed in. “We’ll be the judge of whose story is better.”

“Go on.” Adam’s was the final word.

Aziraphale cleared his throat.

“I arrived while the snow was still fresh on the ground, though it was late May. I traveled through a terribly beautiful country on a network of railroads still quite new to America. The fluffy billows of smoke as we chugged through the rugged landscape was a sight to behold!” Aziraphale clapped his hands together as he set the scene. “We traveled via a precarious track through the Black Canyon, which, I assure you, is actually black. The steep dark rock walls press in close on both sides, and the track was built on rickety timbers set high above the roaring river.” Aziraphale shivered as he recounted the hazardous journey.

“Telluride itself was not much more than a collection of buildings at the end of a canyon where the walls meet.” He made a steeple with his hands to show the lips of the earth coming together. “High above it was a beautiful waterfall where the humans had built a very narrow path that zig zagged up to the basin which overlooked the town. This is where the miners went to do their work extracting the ore and processing it. They sent it down in buckets affixed to ropes that slid down, down, down on ropes with pulleys.” Aziraphale accompanied his descriptions with hand movements and wiggles that brought a smile to the face of the demon in his audience.

“I settled in at the Miner’s Hospital, assisting the lovely nurses and lone physician. They worked out of a small wooden building at the edge of town before the official hospital was built.” Aziraphale looked wistful, forgetting to add flourish to his words as he traveled back through his long memory. “The physician, John, was a young fellow, and quite handsome. He’d gone to medical school to please his father in Boston, but the frontier called to him.” 

Aziraphale looked down at his audience and blinked, coming back to the moment and remembering to add a bit of drama to his descriptions. “He set bones snapped like twigs under mule hooves! He removed bullets from men’s shoulders.” At the mention of potentially gruesome injuries, the Them perked up. ”The nurses soothed fevers and stitched together flesh torn apart by the bears who roamed freely about the frontier. And they held the hands of miners whose work proved too hazardous to survive their injuries.” As Aziraphale’s voice grew soft, the children settled back down.

“Just when I'd gotten accustomed to the disconcerting feeling of living at such a high altitude, a mysterious stranger arrived in town,” Aziraphale said, emphasizing the word mysterious and wagging his eyebrows. 

“But!” Aziraphale exclaimed, with an exaggerated gasp. “He was working for Mr. Pinkerton and his dastardly gaggle of spies!” The Them looked at each other in confusion, but charitably decided to go with it for Aziraphale’s sake. They gasped, putting their hands to their mouths in feigned horror. “They’d been sent to undermine the miners effort to get a more equitable wage and better working conditions.”

“Isn’t it called a brotherhood of spies?” Newt asked, looking thoughtful.

“No, it’s a murder,” Anathema countered.

“That’s crows,” Crowley replied. “I think it’s a slew? A slew of spies?” He looked off in the distance, as if the cheerful arc of balloons waving gently in the breeze above Adam’s inflatable bouncing castle might help him remember. “And anyway, that’s not right at all!”

“What do you mean? I think gaggle has a certain charm-”

“No! You were the one working for Pinkerton, remember? If anyone was in the league of spies, it was you,” Crowley said, angling his body towards Aziraphale and crossing his arms. “I was posing as a union sympathizer. Union all the way, me.”

“I- oh, is that so?” Aziraphale blinked, then considered. “You may be right, actually.” His eyebrows furrowed and Crowley’s expression softened at the storm clouds appearing on the angel’s face. “We’d assumed unions were your lot’s doing since there was so much blowing up of trains. And I seem to recall Gabriel was keen on aligning with the interests of the newly-formed state government.” Aziraphale frowned.

Crowley turned to his young audience. “And what do we remember about the interests of the state, children?”

As one, the Them said, "They aren't necessarily the same as the interests of the people!”

Anathema nodded, while Newt looked confused.

“Crowley, what exactly have you been telling the kids?”

Crowley didn't answer. He smiled smugly and the look he exchanged with Pepper was as close to a wink as he could get while still wearing sunglasses.

“Regardless,” Aziraphale said, pursing his lips, “Crowley’s gang of misfits arrived on horseback and caused quite a ruckus about the town. They were ruffians, treacherous outlaws, the worst sort of troublemaker you could imagine. And when they arrived, the upstanding citizens of the town were rightly concerned.” He lowered his voice but the gleam in his eyes gave away the fondness he clearly felt for the troublemaker sitting next to him.

“Angel, you have no idea what I was up to with that gang.” Crowley raised his eyebrows at his hereditary enemy. “We weren’t exactly on speaking terms, if I recall.”

“Well then, Crowley, _tell the children_ what you were up to with your,” he paused and pulled himself up, somehow looking even more prim than usual, “gang of outlaws.”

The Them perked up, clearly far more interested in outlaws than scenic mountain railroads and mining disputes.

"All right, then." Crowley paused, then folded his arms and looked at the darkening sky beyond the Young’s wooden fence. Brilliant oranges were fading to purple as the day waned, and stars were beginning to peek out beneath the blankets of light. Crowley began his side of the story.

“I’d been riding with a gang for a few months when they were hired by Haywood, the boss of the Miners union. We set off towards Colorado. Before that, we’d been wandering around the west, camping out and causing trouble.” Crowley grinned and put a bit of a mischievous growl into his voice. “And we robbed a few banks.”

“Yeah!” Adam and Wensleydale made finger guns at each other and pretended to shoot, while the rest of the audience looked on in amusement.

Aziraphale coughed.

“Right- yeah, so the banks, I mean, we robbed ‘em but we didn’t kill anybody,” Crowley said. “Mostly we rode around protecting cattle, which was incredibly boring.” He stroked his chin thoughtfully. “And smelly. Everything was smelly, back then. You don’t get that from the movies.”

Aziraphale nodded.

“The gang, it was me and four other guys. Marcus the gunslinger, Crazy Tom, Willie, and One-eyed Joe.”

Pepper raised her hand.

“Uh, so yeah,” Crowley said, heading off her questions. “Joe really did have one eye, Marcus was obviously a gunslinger and Tom should’ve been in treatment for some pretty serious post-traumatic stress. Willie was a member of the Blackfeet Nation, but I’m not gonna tell you what he was called back then. It was 1891, guys, remember?”

“1903,” Aziraphale muttered.

“Whatever.” Crowley continued. “We rode across the plains and camped under the stars. At night you could see- you could see so many of the ones I-” he faltered, and Aziraphale patted his knee. “It was beautiful, is what I’m saying. We lit fires and told scary stories, we ate terrible food, and we were free.”

He paused for a moment, and everyone was silent, picturing the flickering light of a campfire under a dark expanse of sky riven by the streams of the milky way.

“But there was a problem.”

“Saddle sores?” Anathema asked, and it wasn’t apparent whether she was serious or not.

“You lost your hat?” Brian offered.

“No! It was the damned horses. Literally damned,” Crowley said with a snarl. His lip curled back and under his glasses, his eyes flashed yellow. “Every horse I rode turned bad. One day they’re fine, the next they turn black and their eyes are glowing red in the dark, scaring everyone silly.” He sighed. “Me and horses, it’s a thing. One of ‘em dumped me in a pool of dung so deep I’d have drowned if I were human. They hate me and I don’t like ‘em either. So I came up with a solution.”

Aziraphale pursed his lips.

“Shut it!” Crowley said, then continued. “I came up with a solution and by the time we reached Telluride to protect the striking miners from the National Guard, I thought everything was fine.”

“What was the solution?” Newt asked, his face pinched in confusion.

“I’m getting to that. So, we arrive in town and to my surprise,” Crowley gestured at Aziraphale, “my hereditary enemy is also in town. So I do what any self-respecting demon would do.” 

He paused. 

“I got plastered.”

Anathema looked briefly concerned about the potentially mature subject matter this story might contain, then seemed to remember that she was sitting next to the former Antichrist and a group of kids who’d stared down the Apocalypse. She settled back down with her arm around Newt’s waist.

“Everything was fine, until my horse, uh-”

“His horse, you see-”

Crowley and Aziraphale looked at each other, both seeming to realize at the same time that neither would be getting out of the story unscathed.

“Cats!” Crowley exclaimed, at last. “They’re demonic little creatures, and they don’t mind me. Right little portals to Hell, they are.”

“And Heaven!” Aziraphale added. “They’re also heavenly animals full of sweetness and joy. Truly one of the Almighty’s finest pranks.”

“Cats?” Adam said, skeptical. Next to him, Dog’s ears perked up. He looked around, ever watchful for potential feline activity.

“We realized something was amiss with Crowley’s horse that first night after the gang arrived,” Aziraphale said, taking over the narrative. “They’d retired for an evening of merriment in the town’s saloon. And while everyone was distracted, he escaped and climbed up a tree.”

“A horse climbed a tree?” Pepper asked, even more skeptical.

“I don’t even know how he did it!” Crowley said, clearly exasperated with an animal that had been dead for over one hundred years. “I turned him into a proper horse! But somehow, his cat nature was too strong and he started doing … cat things.” Crowley rubbed his forehead.

“Cat things?” Pepper asked. “What kind of cat things?”

“My step-dad has a cat and all it does is lick its bum,” Brain said, turning to Pepper.

“My mum says we can’t have a cat. Or a dog,” Wensleydale said sadly. He patted Dog on the head. “I’m not sure if I’d like a cat if it climbed trees. Or turned into a horse.”

Adam looked down at Dog, seeming to thoughtfully consider the nature of cats, horses, and trees. “Dog follows me around and licks things. I’m glad Dog is a dog, I think. Instead of something else.” The kids nodded to themselves. Realizing he was briefly the center of attention, Dog rolled over so they could all rub his belly.

“But what does a cat-horse do?” Adam asked.

“He found every available bucket of milk in a three mile radius and drank up. The townspeople had a Hell of a time catching it, if you’ll pardon the expression. Crowley’s cat-turned-horse was finally caught in the meadows outside town chasing a groundhog.”

“Yeah, some of the townspeople rounded him up and brought him to the square. Me and the gang were about to head out to the mines anyway, so we saddled the horses and filled our packs with supplies. But then things went sideways.”

“What happened?” Adam asked, now engrossed in the story.

“Aziraphale showed up,” Crowley said, frowning.

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes, it’s _my_ fault you chose to enchant a cat and let it loose in the town where everyone could see.”

Crowley looked like he was about to retort, but Aziraphale cut him off. “The horse — the cat, that is, was rightfully returned to its natural state,” he said. He sat back and smiled in a way that was more than a little smug. 

Crowley made a series of indignant noises. He sputtered, gripping the edges of his lawn chair and bobbing his head. “ _While I was sitting on it!_ ”

The children and adults gasped at that, this time not feigning their concern.

“It was fine," Crowley said in a nasty voice. "I moved it out of the way before I fell on my ass in the mud in the middle of Main Street."

Aziraphale’s mouth set in a thin line and his lips disappeared with the effort it took to hold in a giggle.

“You humiliated me in front of an entire town’s worth of humans, angel,” Crowley said, crossing his arms. He glared at the gathering of humans who were also currently laughing at him.

“I was cross at you!”

“You said you were freeing an animal from the clutches of a demon!”

“I can multitask.”

Crowley sighed. “Some of those guys rode with Butch Cassidy, angel. It took years to live down the name 'kitten Crowley.' "

The laughter receded from Aziraphale’s face and he took Crowley's hand. "I was upset at myself, too, my dear. It was a difficult time. We weren’t speaking to one another, and the last place I expected to see you was the frontier of America. On horseback.” He gave Crowley a coy look. “Wearing very tight trousers with chaps, and a cowboy hat set at a rakish angle, and-”

Anathema cleared her throat.

Crowley squeezed Aziraphale’s hand. They shared a smile.

“But what happened to the horse? Er, cat?” Newt asked.

“Umm, well,” Aziraphale said, and now he looked embarrassed. “Some of the townspeople got the idea that I was, well, in some way associated with dark magics, the cat being a black cat and all. So we-”

“We skipped town. Last I saw it, the cat was happily chasing a mouse into the general store.”

Anathema frowned, then turned to Crowley. “But weren’t you there to protect striking miners? You just left them?”

Crowley opened his mouth and then closed it a few times. “They were fine, in the end. I think that was actually your doing, angel.”

Aziraphale smiled. “It wasn’t. They worked it out themselves, with a minimum of bloodshed. That time, anyway.”

“But! They didn’t get an eight hour day without a fight!” Crowley started, forming a fist and pounding the chair. “It took coordinated strikes across the states to get anyone to listen and they were up against the powerful mine owners and the state government.” He took a breath. “The miners took control of the mines and halted operations. And that's why, when the workers take control of the means of production-”

Crowley took another breath, poised to continue his rant, when he noticed that only three sets of eyes were staring back at him. Pepper, Dog, and Newt were the only ones left sitting on the grass listening. Pepper had gotten a pen and paper from somewhere and was taking notes. Aziraphale had wandered off and was chatting happily with Anathema by a bowl of punch that had made an appearance while he’d been talking.

He sighed.

Just then, Adam ran by brandishing a giant plastic water canon. It was bright orange, and, other than the color, looked startlingly like a real gun. “Look what I got!” he yelled, before blasting Wensleydale with a stream of water.

“Well that’s hardly fair,” Aziraphale said, and with a snap of his fingers, everyone at the party was suddenly armed to the teeth with bright plastic water weaponry.

“No, no, no,” Crowley shouted, “not after what happened last time!”

But it was too late. 

The Them were immediately engaged in gleeful water warfare, chasing each other around picnic tables and spraying each other until all but Pepper were completely soaked. She’d ducked into the inflatable bouncing house and was popping out the door at regular intervals to ruthlessly spray her friends. Newt and Anathema briefly joined forces before her sudden, yet inevitable, betrayal. She giggled as Newt chased her across the lawn, her long skirts whipping about her legs as she ran.

Aziraphale stood aside, with a small, amused smile on his face, completely dry.

“To-hell-you-ride,” Crowley muttered, before grabbing a water balloon from the pile that had appeared on the grass next to him. He lobbed one at his beloved adversary while his back was turned.

**Author's Note:**

> 1- “To-hell-you-ride” is the alternate explanation of Telluride’s name, since gold telluride was never actually found near Telluride. Other towns in the Wild West were named equally silly things based on stories, phrases, etc., so this isn’t nearly as far-fetched as it might sound.
> 
> 2- Water guns: in the book, Warlock’s birthday party ends with both a food fight and water fight, in which Aziraphale turns all the secret service member’s real guns into water guns. (Except one.) This detail didn’t make it in the show, but I love it so very much.
> 
> 3- The labor history of the west is SO complex and my interest is purely casual, so I claim no special knowledge here. There’s good, there’s bad, and there’s ugly on all sides. I think it’s fascinating and highly resonant to the struggles of working people today. Here are a bunch of references for the historical context of this fic - the dates don’t exactly align with historical accuracy, but this Good Omens, so please run with it :)
> 
> -[Bill Haywood](https://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/d_h/haywood.htm) \- the leader of the Western Federation of Miners. He embraced extreme tactics, including violence, in his goal of uniting workers and ultimately, overthrowing capitalism.  
> -[The Pinkerton Detective Agency](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/james-agency/) \- they supposedly saved Abraham LIncoln from an assassination attempt, but also were known as notorious strikebreakers.  
> -Not sure about the veracity of info on [ this site ](https://westernmininghistory.com/towns/colorado/telluride/)but there are some excellent pictures of daily life.  
> -This is a really cool site with[ an interactive map of mines](https://thediggings.com/places/co1132413371/map) that lets you filter by the decade they were active, what minerals they were mining, and more.  
> -[This](https://digital.denverlibrary.org/digital/collection/p15330coll22/id/78498%22) is the building that would later become the miners union hospital.


End file.
